I think two Australians will win this year. Whenever the UFC do a country v country, whichever country they want to promote the sport in wins. Example, TUF UK v US. They loaded the house with quality Brits and not so good Americans, because they wanted the sport to grow in UK. Now they are trying to grow the sport and UFC brand in AUS, so I would not be surprised at all to see the Aussies dominate. Just a theory.

Regarding the show, I thought things looked pretty grim for Team UK. Sotiropoulos is clearly a much much better coach than Pearson. I was cringing when after they showed Team Australia having a sensible first training session, and then went to Team UK knocking ten bells out of each other day one. Really bad. And shock horror, this ridiculous approach to training led to an injury!

Also, even though I am British, due to the attitude of Petrescu and his infantile nonsense at the weigh in, and his general tough guy act, I was rooting against him. He did actually look good in the fight but it comes back to the coaching. He is a striekr and he was throwing catchable body kicks. Sigh.

Show was actually quite good though, looking forward to it. Hope Freakshow either justifies his act by being an awesome fighter or gets completely humbled. Either will suit me.

Maybe the worst 2-0 MMA fighter in history. @jimbojitsusbg granitecitygrappling.com

I think two Australians will win this year. Whenever the UFC do a country v country, whichever country they want to promote the sport in wins. Example, TUF UK v US. They loaded the house with quality Brits and not so good Americans, because they wanted the sport to grow in UK. Now they are trying to grow the sport and UFC brand in AUS, so I would not be surprised at all to see the Aussies dominate. Just a theory.

Regarding the show, I thought things looked pretty grim for Team UK. Sotiropoulos is clearly a much much better coach than Pearson. I was cringing when after they showed Team Australia having a sensible first training session, and then went to Team UK knocking ten bells out of each other day one. Really bad. And shock horror, this ridiculous approach to training led to an injury!

Also, even though I am British, due to the attitude of Petrescu and his infantile nonsense at the weigh in, and his general tough guy act, I was rooting against him. He did actually look good in the fight but it comes back to the coaching. He is a striekr and he was throwing catchable body kicks. Sigh.

Show was actually quite good though, looking forward to it. Hope Freakshow either justifies his act by being an awesome fighter or gets completely humbled. Either will suit me.

Interesting philosophy, whilst I can see why they would do something like that you cannot fix something like this so it kind of is fair game, I don't think that they have a better team than the UK. Warranted that guys like Rob Sinclair, Danny Mitchell etc would have raised the level but they seem to be happy to pick guys from teams that are pretty well known.

I still can't get over the fact that 4 guys are associated with the one team?!

If you didn't see it with your own eyes, or hear it with your own ears, don't invent it with your small mind and share it with your big mouth!

Interesting philosophy, whilst I can see why they would do something like that you cannot fix something like this so it kind of is fair game

I agree they can't fix it, but they can certainly stack the odds in Team Aus favour. I know nothing about Australian MMA but I would hazard a guess that the guys chosen for the show are THE BEST there are in Australia outside of the UFC. I don't know if the same can be said of Team UK.

The only thing I really base the theory on is the last time they did a TUF which was country v country. American fighters are generally far superior to UK fighters, yet Team UK won WITH EASE!?

Maybe the worst 2-0 MMA fighter in history. @jimbojitsusbg granitecitygrappling.com

I think two Australians will win this year. Whenever the UFC do a country v country, whichever country they want to promote the sport in wins. Example, TUF UK v US. They loaded the house with quality Brits and not so good Americans, because they wanted the sport to grow in UK. Now they are trying to grow the sport and UFC brand in AUS, so I would not be surprised at all to see the Aussies dominate. Just a theory.

I think that was very much the case with the UK vs US season. Even the UK guys who didn't get into the house would have given the Americans that did a hard time (Mills, Maguire etc). It was definitely a star-maker for the UK, and in the case of Ross, it worked.

Is this a repeat though? I don't know. The UK team is strong, even if there were a couple of surprising omissions (and at least one guy who didn't make it due to Australia's tough boarder policy). Pastou, Bola, Newman, Fletcher, Parke...hell, with maybe the odd exception, most of these guys were considered 'UFC-bound' over the next couple of years.

With Australia, I don't think they're in that position where they desperately need local stars just yet. They do maybe one show a year there, and it always sells out, even without the strongest cards. Back when they did UK vs USA, the UFC were struggling to turn a decent profit in the UK and attendance was dipping slightly.

According to a journo mate of mine in Aus, their team is pretty strong, but again, there were a couple of omissions - presumably guys who didn't test well for TV. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Regarding the show, I thought things looked pretty grim for Team UK. Sotiropoulos is clearly a much much better coach than Pearson. I was cringing when after they showed Team Australia having a sensible first training session, and then went to Team UK knocking ten bells out of each other day one. Really bad. And shock horror, this ridiculous approach to training led to an injury!

It's not fair to say who is 'clearly' a much better coach based on what you've seen on one episode. Remember, the 'training session' you've seen is a couple of days worth of footage (often not taken from the same session) edited down into a few minutes (if that) of actual training footage.

You're looking at a scripted narrative - The UFC sends them out to press (in this case, before the show had actually aired in the UK), detailing the 'story' for each episode. The 'story' for episode one was the rowdy Brits coming to town, knocking seven bells out of each other in training (coz that's what we do, innit bruv?) to the point that their biggest threat got injured. Cue tears, drama, tugging of heart strings and mystery over what will happen next.

He did actually look good in the fight but it comes back to the coaching. He is a striekr and he was throwing catchable body kicks. Sigh.

In fairness, Ross was telling him not to throw body kicks for exactly that reason.